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Alyson West asked if the department was connected to any app services. 271 272 Theo Letman answered that as the department expands its resources in the future, Staff hopes to include apps 273 (subscription packages). 274 275 Ted Triebel asked if along with the new roll-out, if Staff set any specific goals for new ridership? 276 277 Theo Letman said that they want more riders. 278 279 Ted Triebel elaborated and asked if the department was setting-out objectives and timelines to help figure out 280 where they are headed. He urged the department to have some concrete goals. 281 282 Theo Letman said that he hesitated to answer the question because there must be an order to things; first, the 283 department needs to understand where it is, in this point in time, to know where it is going. Because the department 284 has been using more old-school methods to collect data, it appears that much of its data is not accurate. Staff is 285 scrubbing the data now and is implementing new methods for data gathering. There are also requirements from the 286 FTA that track what the department is doing, like ridership numbers, mileage and other related indicators. Once the 287 department establishes this baseline, they will establish targets for the future. Mr. Letman said that this is a fluid 288 process, especially when they are adding new service and that they do plan to expand ridership, but that he could 289 not say what that would look like right now. 290 291 Erle Smith questioned if goal setting is dependent on the department’s current numbers. He suggested that the 292 department could look at similar systems in similar situations (i.e. percentage coverage by particular area) and base 293 goals on that. By looking at current numbers and similar systems, two goal-setting measures could operate 294 simultaneously. 295 296 Theo Letman responded that if the department had a good comparable service, perhaps those measures could be 297 considered, but Orange County is unique; this is a huge rural area. Orange County cannot compare to Durham or 298 Raleigh. Orange County is just coming into fixed routes. Alamance County is just starting its service but with 299 Burlington they have an even larger urbanized area than Orange County. It is a hard comparison. 300 301 Erle Smith suggested that if Staff opened the aperture and examined the flyover states, they may find some areas 302 that are common with the situation here. 303 304 Theo Letman responded that he thought that could be possible. 305 306 Erle Smith said that he agrees with Ted Triebel about the importance of goal-setting and that if the department does 307 not yet know where it’s going, and how it get there. 308 309 Peter Murphy revisited the slide presentation on passenger count comparisons. Passengers-per-hour is compared 310 with similar peer counties (about 15 counties out of 100 counties statewide), a grouping by NCDOT. The 311 department does compare there and based on this, the target for passengers is 3.6 per hour. The County is above 312 that across the board. Staff wants the Hill-to-Hill route to be at 3.6 passengers per hour. It will take a couple of 313 years for the department to get to this goal. 314 315 Heidi Perry asked about the passengers-per-hour average and goal. She commented that Orange County is right 316 below the 3.6 goal at 1.6 or so. 317 318 Peter Murphy said that on the Circulator, they have 8 passengers-per-hour; on the Chapel Hill route, they are 319 regularly at 2 passengers-per-hour, except during the summer when passengers drop below 2 per hour due to 320 students and workers not using transit services when the university is not in full session. On this route, the 321 department has still watched this passenger-per-hour number grow from 1.29 to 2 passengers-per-hour, hovering 322 over 2 passengers-per-hour at the end of this past school year, getting closer to the 3.6 target. When the 323 department looks at its entire service, they are higher than the 3.6 as a whole, when averaged. NCDOT’s 324 8